Wireless A/V (audio/video) applications are becoming increasingly numerous and require ever higher data bit rates of the order of Gigabits per second (Gbps) and an increasingly higher quality of service. W-PAN millimeter type networks are particularly well suited to this type of application. Indeed, the authorized band around a carrier frequency of 60 GHz offers a wide bandwidth thus enabling the transportation of a large quantity of data. Moreover, the radio range of such systems is limited to about ten meters, favouring the re-utilization of the frequencies in time and space. A typical characteristic of millimeter waves is their sensibility to masking phenomenon; static or moving obstacles such as furniture, objects, humans etc. can block or disrupt the communication path causing transmission errors.
Since in high speed A/V wireless systems, the available bandwidth is mainly dedicated to the transmission of the data application, the amount of bandwidth used for control or protocol should be minimized.
Point to point transmissions over millimeter waves often suffer from low Signal to Noise ratios (SNR) and from shadowing. Consequently optimized paths between the emitter transmitting the data and the receiver of the data are required. This signifies that transmissions should be performed only through reliable paths so as to limit the number of potential retransmissions. However the reliability of transmission paths can never be guaranteed.
The present invention has been devised to address one or more of the foregoing concerns.